Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

To the Diplomatic Conference in Plenary on  June 27, 2013 On the Adoption of the Treaty of Marrakech This is an excellent Treaty . The Benetech team is delighted by its adoption today. We have the technology, we have the content, and now we have the legal framework to make it possible for every person with a print disability on the planet to get access to the books they need for education, employment and social inclusion! At Benetech , we like to think of ourselves as part of Silicon Valley’s heart. We are a high tech organization that is not organized as a for-profit company, but instead as a nonprofit charitable corporation working to ensure technology serves all of humanity. Our goal is not to make money for private interests, but instead to use technology to maximize social good. For years, we have been working to end the worldwide book famine. This Treaty provides a tremendous tool to accelerate that work. It is our hope that Benetech’s Bookshare library, the a...

Benetech, my nonprofit organization operates Bookshare, the largest online library dedicated to serving blind and print disabled people. We have 197,000 books available in the United States today, and serve 250,000 people , mainly in the United States, but also in 40 other countries. Our library is made possible both by a domestic copyright exception that makes it possible for us to add any book requested by a blind person to our library, as well as strong cooperation with publishers who provide many of their books directly to our library for free, including the rights to serve people in certain other countries. Our library is unusual, in that our charter is to serve all people with print disabilities of the world, not just those in our country. Our focus is on carefully vetting each person as having a qualified print disability through working with trustworthy institutions in our own and other countries, and then letting qualified users loose in a library without limits! And, j...

Earlier today, I attended the American Foundation for the Blind’s (AFB) National Leadership Conference in Chicago where I received the 2013 Migel Medal . The Migel Medal, often called the highest honor in the blindness field, is awarded annually to one or two individuals whose careers exemplify exceptional accomplishments in the field. It was named for the first board chair of AFB, M.C. Migel, whose experiences with blindness caused during World War I, led to him helping start the Foundation.  Helen Keller, who worked for AFB for many years, was on the original award board for its first twenty years, starting in 1937. The other recipient this year was Kay Ferrell, Professor of Special Education at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, who won the Medal for her tremendous work with and on behalf of children and youth who are blind and visually impaired. I’m honored to join Kay in receiving this prestigious award and deeply grateful to AFB for its recognition. Remarks ...

Statement of Benetech to the 22nd Session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights at the World Intellectual Property Organization June 15, 2011, Geneva, Switzerland • Greetings from California’s Silicon Valley! I’m a high tech engineer and the founder of Benetech, one of Silicon Valley’s leading nonprofit technology companies, dedicated to seeing that the benefits of technology help all of humanity, not just the richest 10% • As a nonprofit charity, we focus on areas of market failure, where regular for-profit companies have decided that the market opportunity for a given product is not large enough • One of our best-known programs is the Bookshare library, the largest online library of accessible books in the world, a library dedicated to serving the one or two percent of the population with a severe print disability • Since I last spoke to this body less than one year ago at SCCR20, the Bookshare library has grown from serving 100,000 people with print disabilities...

A hot topic at the SCCR20/WIPO discussions in Geneva on global access to materials by the print disabilities is the term "Trusted Intermediaries"("TIs"). This was first introduced (to my knowledge) in the Stakeholder's Platform discussions, which were the quickly ginned-up alternative option created in response to the original introduction at WIPO of the Treaty for the Visually Impaired ("TVI") by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay (and now co-sponsored by Mexico). The concept of TIs uses U.S. and similar copyright exceptions as a starting point. In the U.S. exception, Section 121, posted at Bookshare as the Chafee Amendment, the term is "authorized entities." In the statute: "authorized entity" means a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities; I...

Statement of Benetech to the 20th Session of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights at the World Intellectual Property Organization June 23, 2010, Geneva, Switzerland • My nonprofit organization, Benetech, operates Bookshare, the largest online library for people with print disabilities, with the mission of bringing accessible books to all people with print disabilities around the world • We have roughly 100,000 members in the U.S. with print disabilities, with more than 70,000 copyrighted works in our library, the majority of which have been created under the US copyright exception by volunteers, mainly people with disabilities themselves, helping each other. • At Bookshare, we have been very sensitive to the complaints of blind and print disabled people around the world, feeling that they have been unfairly denied access to our extensive collection o My explanation that it’s simply copyright law doesn’t make them feel any better • We would like a binding instrument so...

A Policy Update from an engineer, Jim Fruchterman of Benetech June 8, 2010 The international copyright negotiations in Geneva around a proposed Treaty for the Visually Impaired (“TVI”) have been steadily heating up. Counterproposals have been made, governments have been engaging with rights holders, consumers and NGOs (or not!) and there’s a general feeling something is going to happen. I’m heading to Geneva later this month for the next major meeting at the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”), to hear the latest and make my three-minute oration as an accredited NGO representative (first time for me!). My recommendation to the advocacy community is to continue to pursue a “yes-and” approach, as we have so far with the TVI and the Stakeholders’ Platform. However, my suggestion is to pursue the U.S. Joint Recommendation and the TVI, but drop the Stakeholders’ Platform. This update explains my reasoning. Remember, IANAL (I am not a lawyer). So, your lawyer’s opinion may vary...

Last Friday I spent almost two and a half hours in a wide-ranging conversation with Maria Pallante and Michele Woods of the Copyright Office (Michele's name updated, plus a summer law clerk attended) . I came away with a much better understanding of the issues they are exploring and certainly did my part to articulate why I support the positions we have. [Long post alert!] I would characterize the atmosphere as one of informed and intelligent skepticism on the part of the Copyright Office, with many questions exploring different positions. We discussed Chafee, especially in the context of the Amazon text-to-speech brouhaha, and the proposed international treaty that was tabled at the WIPO SCCR meeting in Geneva last month. The Chafee Amendment The U.S. copyright exemption for serving the print disabled is commonly called the Chafee Amendment: Section 121 of copyright law. It’s what makes our Bookshare service legally possible. The fact-finding public hearing and request for com...

Betsy Beaumon and I had the pleasure to meet today with Kareem Dale, the special assistant to the president for disability policy. We had a wide-ranging conversation about Bookshare and the current hot disability issues. Really exciting. The one incredibly newsworthy item was Kareem emailed me (during the meeting) a statement he drafted on the topic of the Global Treaty that was discussed in late May at the SCCR event at the World Intellectual Property Organization. I found it very exciting as President Obama's position on this developing issue! The following is the email I received from Kareem Dale in its entirety (and I have his permission to distribute it): Access to information and ideas is essential for personal and professional growth and full engagement in a democratic society. But engagement can be severely limited when information is not available in accessible formats. We are committed to building a world that no longer puts up unnecessary barriers. We must create...

Lots of excitement recently in Geneva at the World Intellectual Property Organization. We've been supportive of an effort by the World Blind Union to get an international treaty in place that sets up a global system much like the one we have today in the United States. I was part of an expert panel that drafted the original proposed treaty. Bookshare pretty much has been made possible by the Chafee Amendment, a copyright exception provision in U.S. law that made it legal for us to scan just a bout any book without needing to get permissions first. The goal of the treaty is to set a standard that all countries have such a provision, and that they interact with other countries. Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay joined together to propose that WIPO consider this treaty. During the meeting in Geneva, there was worrisome rhetoric coming from the advocacy community, like the Boing Boing post USA, Canada and the EU attempt to kill treaty to protect blind people's access to written ma...